Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

If each deck is ten feet, two decks would be at least 20-feet of the saucer rim... and there is a few inches between each deck. So when you take the thickness of the rim, then subtract 20-feet and a couple of inches... what's left over?

Why are you assuming that the decks on the outer rim are full 10 foot decks?

Other than near the dorsal, deck 6's inner core is completely divided from it's outer rim. You have to go to deck 5 to move from the outer rim of deck 6 to the center core of deck 6. The center core has a height of 10 foot, but the outer rim doesn't... nor does it have to as we never saw the outer rim (of either deck 5 or 6) in the show.

And none of this is a new subject... I refer you to the sketches I've done in my thread to date. At no point do I attempt to shoehorn in two full deck heights in the limited space of the outer rim... which is already diminished by the saucer's under cut. There are about a dozen graphics in that thread all displaying the same thing... a shorten height for the outer rim of deck 6.

This is another thing that the 1080' length helps out with, by the way...

If you assume that Decks 6 and 7 don't have the full 10' "filming height" but rather a more reasonable 8'4" deck height (comparable to many homes) and go with the larger scale... it's not really a stretch to have two FULL decks there (perhaps requiring just a tiny amount of tweaking of the undercut curvature?). You get, instead of one deck and another "ring deck" out there, you have two full decks, with an underslung equipment bay around the rim.

This, to me, is the only way that the "undercut" makes any engineering sense. It's not cutting into existing deckspace, it's blending between the bottom of the "plain" area of the deck-7 floor and the "underhang ring" underside.

Interestingly, this actually could sort of work with the "Abramsprise" idea... the "undercut" (which is absent from his model) was added in some later refitting.

Looking at Matt Jeffrey's original drawings it shows only 1.5 decks on the rim. Yet there are two rows of windows...

It would be helpful to know which drawing you are talking about... Jefferies drew quite a few of them.

As for the rows of windows... these were cut into the model after it was originally built to add lighting and increase detail. The holes for the windows on the rim were limited to four spots (three corners and the bow). Those windows don't make sense as deck indicators As they are in the wrong places for any configuration.

How do I deal with it? Well in this sketch (again, none of this is new, there is a complete thread with all of this and much, much more here) I address the odd placement by putting a commons area there that is the full height of the rim where people on the upper balcony and the lower deck share the view out those windows.

Deck 5 of that compartment is depicted as having 18 cabins and 8 bathrooms, deck 6 wasn't drawn, but would have had an additional 10 cabins and four bathrooms, community restroom and equipment/storage for most of the people living in that compartment (estimated 56 people).

Unless you thought I was pulling those window placements out of thin air (or you aren't taking the time to review that thread first), why ask about them?

Aren't the saucer rims of the TOS and TMP enterprise around the same thickness?

No.

But since you brought up the outer rim of the TMP Enterprise (and I'm sure you are familiar with hull compartments of the TOS Enterprise), the outer ring of compartments were most likely replaced in full on the TMP Enterprise... meaning that they are not the original structure, which is why the saucer has a wider diameter and the rim edge is different in almost every way from the original.

Out of curiousity how high is the ceiling in the room depicted in (Post #57 this thread) the picture where Captain Kirk is with a blonde-haired woman looking out the window?

The first of the two images is in the gallery over looking the hangar deck (deck 16a, that was first sketched out here and later in greater detail here), the second image would appear to be on deck 2... both are about 10 feet (give or take a little), and neither represent rim windows.

Cary L. Brown wrote:

This is another thing that the 1080' length helps out with, by the way...

Which is fine for re-imagining how it was done. My project was to see if the Enterprise as envisioned by Jefferies worked.

This, to me, is the only way that the "undercut" makes any engineering sense.

... Today.

One should always take any of this with the understanding that we are hundreds of years in the past. You see no reason from an early 21st century perspective, but to someone of (Trek's) 23rd century it might seem to have a simple reason.

I would point out that in Jefferies drawings he often had a defined line (edge) where that lower section was added... it only appears as a smooth curve on the model.

And we shouldn't forget that it was your request that moved me from doing my plans off of the Jefferies construction plans to the 11 foot model. Or don't you recall this...

Cary L. Brown wrote:

Hmmm... the only dubious decision you've made (IMHO). As far as I'm concerned, the "real" ship is the one seen on-screen. Anything else might represent a different ship, but it cannot be "The Enterprise" in my mind.

Then again, I'm old and crotchety and set in my ways!

Well, there is more than enough on-screen stuff to support the 947' length... so maybe you aren't as set in your ways as you thought you were.

That drawing which depicts the deck ending before reaching the window on the rim is kind of odd...

Has anyone suggested such a set-up before?

As I pointed out before, we never saw anything in the outer rim of the saucer... at all. The cabins are based on the set design (using a different radial component for the walls). But because every compartment needs to be self-sufficient a commons area seemed like the best use of the very small area of each of the four outer rim compartments near the windows.

To answer your question, Andrew Probert suggested a similar split level rec area design for the TMP Enterprise at one point. But I hope that you aren't saying that you've never seen an indoor balcony setup before.

The rim windows didn't work with anything seen on-screen and unlike other parts of the ship, didn't work for deck levels. Plus they cut the square holes in the top of the saucer (for replacing burned out bulbs in the model)... those worked as windows if they are used for skylights.

So the corridors opening up to a commons area seemed like a good use of space that didn't work for other stuff. You have a row of tables along the top balcony and a series of tables below all with a nice view out the windows. The skylight is above a stairwell that connects the two commons areas.

If this seems odd to you, I suggest that you might need to get out more... this is not an odd design. I've been in quite a few buildings and ships that have similar arrangements. I guess if you've never been to a city you might never have seen this before, but it is really quite common (even one of my homes as a child had a similar indoor balcony setup).

If I recall Andrew Probert's drawing had the balcony on the window-side of the rim, not the other way... It could work I suppose either way...

It makes sense though truthfully to just use an eight foot deck height at the rim which could squeeze two decks in there, and fiddle with the position of the windows on the rim and the height of each window...

If I recall Andrew Probert's drawing had the balcony on the window-side of the rim, not the other way... It could work I suppose either way...

I wasn't talking about when the rec room was moved to it's later rim position, so I'm guessing you don't know what I was talking about.

It makes sense though truthfully to just use an eight foot deck height at the rim which could squeeze two decks in there, and fiddle with the position of the windows on the rim and the height of each window...

Fiddle here and fiddle there, next thing you know you are no longer following Jefferies original ideas.

Lets be clear on this... for my plans, NO FIDDLING.

If you change the positions of the windows, you aren't doing the Enterprise anymore. I'm only interested in ideas that allow the ship to work within the original confines.

It is funny, most people aren't willing to spend that much time trying to figure out how to make it work... so they cheat. Change positions, change dimensions, pretty soon you have the Franz Joseph plans.

True... and I would be happy to defer to yours (or anyone else's) illustrations on this for the discussion if you are (or anyone else is) willing to share them with us.

Usually what we have is a lot of talk, but people don't take the next step to actually show that what they are saying works (and how). My sketches at least illustrate my ideas in a way that others can study, comment on and use (if they would like).

Granted, there are people (Cary, aridas, Warped9 and April are good examples) who I know well enough to trust their ideas without always needing it illustrated, but they have taken the time in the past to provide us with illustrated examples of their work too.

I would be happy to see your ideas fleshed out. And if you are worried about using some of the other illustrations of the Enterprise (such as Sinclair's or Casimiro's work) as a starting point, I offer any of my sketches to you. I have provided most of my work under a share-and-share-alike license to help others express their ideas on this subject.

Location: In selfless service to fandom, on the road to becoming a Star Trek trivia god...

Re: If You Could Re-Imagine the Constitution-Class Refit...

Herkimer Jitty wrote:

I've seen at least 2 similar proposals. I don't see anything odd about it... the saucer has more than enough room to spare for the crew... why not give em some nice, open space?

Plus, in the event of an attack, and subsequent failure of the shields, wouldn't you rather have something relatively nonessential on the outer rim, like a gymnasium, rec room, or, dare I say it, bowling alley, than crew quarters?

True... and I would be happy to defer to yours (or anyone else's) illustrations on this for the discussion if you are (or anyone else is) willing to share them with us.

Usually what we have is a lot of talk, but people don't take the next step to actually show that what they are saying works (and how). My sketches at least illustrate my ideas in a way that others can study, comment on and use (if they would like).

I should inform you that I'm not the best artist in the world but with proper diagrams and such I should be able to do okay.

I would be happy to see your ideas fleshed out. And if you are worried about using some of the other illustrations of the Enterprise (such as Sinclair's or Casimiro's work) as a starting point, I offer any of my sketches to you. I have provided most of my work under a share-and-share-alike license to help others express their ideas on this subject.

That I wouldn't mind.

Out of curiousity are your drawings of the TOS Constitution true to the TV-model?